KYIV. April 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that Ukraine must fulfill the conditions necessary for applying for EU membership within five years.
“We are ambitious in our plans and faith and that’s why we declare that we should ensure effective the implementation of the association agreement [with the EU] and achieve the conditions needed for applying for EU membership within five years,” Poroshenko said at the Ukraine-EU summit in Kyiv on Monday.
He said he believes that Ukrainian membership of the EU is the country’s key goal.
“The prospect of EU membership is the strategic guiding line of our aspirations to reform. This is a key task, for which the reforms are carried out, this is a key task of our program Strategy 2020 and the convincing support of this course by the citizens [of Ukraine] is constantly confirmed by public opinion polls,” he said.
Poroshenko added that the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement is an integral part of the reform program and is “the basis of the coalition agreement when the Ukrainian government was set up.”
